Heritage of the Kingdom

You are met at the airport and driven in. Riyadh is the country's main air hub and the usual arrival point. The first evening is left free.

The National Museum of Saudi Arabia covers the Arabian Peninsula from prehistory to the modern state, arranged as halls running in sequence so the whole span can be walked in one visit. It sits inside the King Abdulaziz Historical Centre in central Riyadh, on the same grounds as Al Masmak, the clay fort where the capture of the city in 1902 began the state that exists today. Four watchtowers, thick walls and one studded door: a garrison building, and small.

At-Turaif is the mud-brick district at Diriyah that was the seat of the Emirate of Diriyah from 1727 to 1818, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2010: palaces, a mosque and defensive walls in Najdi style on the edge of the Wadi Hanifa valley. It is the most complete surviving Najdi architecture at this scale, restored and opened as a museum quarter you walk through. Wadi Hanifa runs below it as a green corridor and fills the late afternoon.

A flight north to Hail, a city between granite ranges and open plains that was a stop on the old northern trade routes. The afternoon covers the two landmarks in the city itself: A'arif Fort, on its hilltop since 1256 AH and built to guard the southern approach, and Barzan Palace, of which two towers of around 12 metres remain.

Out into the Nafud sand sea to Jubbah, about 90 kilometres north-west of Hail, where the carvings on Umm Senman were inscribed by UNESCO in 2015. Human figures, cattle, ibex and hunting scenes are cut into sandstone that once stood on a lakeshore, and the animals shown belong to a wetter Arabia than the one there now. On the way back you drive through the Aja mountains, dark red granite standing out of pale sand with palm settlements in the gaps.

A travel day into the AlUla valley, which holds four distinct sites within a short drive of one another. You arrive with the afternoon free and the next two days already booked.

Hegra was the southern capital of the Nabataean kingdom and is the largest conserved Nabataean site south of Petra, with more than 110 tombs cut into sandstone outcrops and 94 of them decorated. The facades date from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. It is entered only by guided tour with an AlUla Rawi, moving between clusters by vehicle. At the visitor centre is the reconstructed face of Hinat, excavated from one of the tombs in 2008.

Dadan was the capital of the Dadanite and Lihyanite kingdoms before the Nabataeans reached Hegra, and its tombs are cut almost 50 metres up the cliff wall, two guarded by carved lions. Jabal Ikmah is a narrow canyon carrying hundreds of inscriptions in Dadanitic, Thamudic, Minaic and Nabataean scripts, on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register for documentary heritage. They record names, dedications and offerings rather than proclamations. The evening is in AlUla Old Town, mud-brick houses from the 12th century behind fourteen gates, under a fort of around the 10th century standing 45 metres up.

A flight to Jeddah and the afternoon in Historic Jeddah, on the World Heritage List since 2014. The city has been a major Indian Ocean port since the 7th century AD and the sea gateway for pilgrims to Makkah, and that double role paid for the quarter that survives: tower houses of coral stone, their facades covered in roshan, the carved wooden bay windows. Many buildings are propped and restoration is running one at a time, so half of it is a work site.

Time in the morning to go back into the old quarter or out along the corniche, depending on your flight, then a transfer to the airport.